25 January 2015

Lebanese dirty rice

Some weeks ago I wrote a post about my newest vegetarian cookbook the New Feast
by Greg and Lucy Malouf and now I cooked my first dish from it, the
Lebanese dirty rice.
It's a traditional Middle Eastern dish and I would love to hear from
local people (or from people more experienced in this style of
cuisine) how you usually make this dish. Please comment in the box
below, if you have any experiences with such dishes. And obviously
you can also comment, if you don't! The recipe was also published as an
edited extract here.
First I was very surprised by the lack of different spices, but when
I ate the dish I realised that nothing else was needed. This was such a simple and beautiful dish and I think it will become a regular in my kitchen. The fried onions are just amazing!

I made some
adjustments according to what was in my cupboard. I replaced the
small black lentils with green lentils and the long-grain rice with
brown rice. I also added one tablespoon of vegetable stock powder to
the lentils when they were cooking. Otherwise I stuck more or less to
the original recipe, but the below one is my version of it. I doubled
up the ingredient amounts as well as I wanted to have a huge dish
(feeds about 4 adults), but feel free to reduce the amounts if you
prefer.

Ingredients for the rice

2 onions

4 tbsp olive oil

80 g green lentils

160 g brown rice

1,5 – 2 litres
water

1 tsp ground cumin

Dried rose petals
for the presentation

Ingredients for the fried onions

2 large onions

6 tbsp cornflour

1 tsp ground cumin

Vegetable oil for
deep/shallow frying

Method

Chop the onions
for the rice finely and rinse the lentils. Start cooking the chopped
onions in the olive oil until soft. Then add the lentils and about
one litre water. More water will be added later. Let cook under lid
for about 20 minutes until the lentils are almost done.

Then add the rice
and little water if needed. Let cook for further 30 minutes. It can
take longer with the brown rice. The goal is to cook both very soft
so that the lentils stain the rice and make it dirty as described in
the title.

In the meanwhile
slice the onions for the topping into this strips and soak them for
about 15 minutes in salt water. After that drain them well. For the
coating mix the cornflour and ground cumin and roll the drained
onions in there. Heat vegetable oil in a pan and deep fry the onions
until they are crispy.

Serve the rice
with the onions and rose petals on the top and enjoy! I found this
pheomenal even cold the next day. What a great dish! I'm going to
make this again next week, as it's also very cheap and I should
always have the ingredients for it in the cupboard.

6 comments:

MMm the fried onions are calling my name. Its been a while since I've had fried onions, usually to top off a Indian style lentil curry. I will have to look out for this cookbook, first see if the library has it, if not flick through it at the bookshop and who knows may be tempted to get a copy.

This sounds similar to one I tried and mean to try again - I got it from http://figjamandlimecordial.com/2013/11/21/lentils-and-rice/ - and tasted great - if you had this all you need are some vegies with it and you have dinner

Who is The VegHog?

A vegetarian hobby cook and urban gardener born in Finland, currently living in Denmark. I try to develop my cooking skills by making a wide variety of veggie dishes, some of them traditional and some new creations. My favourites include veggie burgers, squashes, organic and local produce, cider, spelt, rye, pizzas, pasta dishes, risottos and sea-buckthorn.
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